Yasmine Irani

01. Context Matters

This is a piece surrounding censorship. In our society, women's bodies tend to be censored regardless of context simply due to the fact that people, specifically men, sexualize them unwantedly. This is simply unacceptable and minimizes a woman's existence to a mere object of sexual desire. Across social media platforms, if women are posting themselves simply having fun, out with family and friends, wearing something that accents their body, if it’s deemed to be showing “too much”, it will get flagged. Artists who post their work on social media, if it contains nudity, must censor it so as to go along with guidelines, despite the fact that there is no sexual intent. Same goes for photographers who photograph models or celebrities who are showing a nipple under a sheer top, despite the stylistic aspect and the complete lack of any sexual undertone, they get flagged.To approach this topic, I’ve gathered found images from pornographic websites that showcase topless women, and have cropped them to remove any sort of identity, and only focus on the exposed breasts. The choice to crop out identity is to highlight the fact that women are disregarded as individuals and human beings and simply viewed as objects. The pornographic images will be censored by hand, using “x”’s to cover the nipples. The censoring by hand is meant to represent the fact that the flagging and censoring done through social media platforms is done by a human being; someone views the images and decides it needs to be censored or is inappropriate for the platform, regardless of context.These pornographic images are censored since the context of them is meant to be sexual. These images, regardless of censoring, are typically removed from platforms as porn is not allowed on these sites. If porn directly is not allowed based on context and nature of the imagery, why would this type of restriction be placed on regular peoples photos, who have no intention of being sexualized or presenting themselves in such a manner? Sprinkled within these censored women are a few men, whose nipples have not been censored; this is a note on how men's nipples have never once been censored in our history of imagery, regardless of context. Mens bare chests undoubtedly have the capacity to be sexualized, and everyone is aware of this fact, but they’re never censored, as even when they are sexualized, they’re not objectified the way women are.